Let Me in the Wall
by thenopetrain
Summary: They're both too guarded for their own good, but not as guarded as they think they are. The longer they spend time together, the more their walls crumble; the more vulnerable they become.
1. Dust to Dust pt 1

**I own nothing of The Blacklist. If I did, I wouldn't be obsessing over all the secrets in this show. **

**I know I'm super late in the updating department of my other Blacklist story, but I just can't get the dialogue to flow the way I want it to. So in the meantime, you can read this. Sorry for the wait, you guys. **

**I fell in love with the song 'Dust to Dust' by The Civil Wars. It's wonderful. Go listen to it. (Actually, you should just buy all of their songs. Poison & Wine is a great one too. And Falling. Fantastic music. Most of it is haunting, but beautiful.) It's what I was listening to when I got the idea for this. It gets you in the Red and Liz-for the love of mike tell us their history-mode. Consequently, all the lyrics in this fic are from that song.**

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_It's not your eyes_

_It's not what you say_

_It's not your laughter_

_That gives you away_

_You're just lonely_

_You've been lonely, too long_

"_Run."_

He never understood why people would run for fun. He still doesn't. In his life, the only time he ever ran was because something was hunting him, or he it. _Death. Safety. Victory. Love. A second chance._

Run for fun...

How about run, so this soldier doesn't kill you? Run after that person so mercy won't come back to haunt you later. Run because hell is raining down on you. Run or the love of your life will get away. Run so your three-year old daughter won't fall down the stairs. Run because your family is waiting for you. Run because they think you did it. Run into the burning house; Run away from it. Run to the dream of your wife's arms. Run to home, to bed, to church, to a safe place. Then, run away from all those lovely, vulnerable things.

Run for your life.

Run.

But they didn't get to. The glass had long since shattered. Bullets stopped punching their way into the safe house. There were two waves. Despite his callings-out, Lizzie hadn't stirred. She just breathed as the initial assault became the second; wild shots, warning shots, damaging shots, shots to take out any other occupants in the house. They were all the same. _Dembe._

He hadn't been able to breathe very well when they dragged him out. He hadn't fought hard enough, couldn't make his right arm cooperate with his desperate need to get Berlin's hands off of _her._

They'd taken them two days ago.

Sessions had been sporadic.

Beatings.

Lizzie's screams.

Images of her.

Medical attention: they don't want him to die yet.

Finally, there was just the cell and the aching and the tricks.

_Oh, you're acting your thin disguise_

_All your perfectly delivered lines_

_They don't fool me_

_You've been lonely, too long_

"Do you have an escape plan, yet?"

Her voice is taut and strained from the opposite corner of their cell.

Hours had passed since they threw him back in here. Dread, regret, and longing sat tidy in the center of the floor.

Six-sided

Wrapped like Christmas

Tied off with a red bow

Someone tried to get creative

He'd opened it, of course. Handled it like a grenade about to go off; hands shaking, breath non-existent, suffocating on the fear. He found the bracelet she'd been wearing since the day Berlin crashed into their lives. A token of victory and hope made perverse by the man set to ruin him.

He had known what was coming next. Felt it draw closer and closer until the second gift arrived and his heart lurched up into his throat. There were very few things that could make him puke the way that box did. He left the gift where it had appeared, and after his body was done rebelling, he'd retreated to where he sat now; squeezing the life out of the little figures on the bracelet as if he could make them apart of his flesh.

_They have her, Sir._ The words that brought all of this mess into her life were the same ones that taunted him now. They have her. All of her. Pieces of her. And the first of those pieces sat leering at him; the perfect revenge.

All that had transpired since he'd dragged himself away was silence and bleeding. He was wasting away in to the wall at his back; becoming neither stone, nor inheriting any kind of impenetrable quality. _She_ stayed in her corner, breathing and trembling and quiet enough to be dead. _He_ dissolved into the nothing he knew he'd become. He figures he stared to long into the dark, because the dark had certainly stared longer into him.

The small box that sat on the floor between them sent nausea into his stomach with the occasional lurch. Oh, he wouldn't be sick again, wasn't strong enough, but the feeling would stay and stay and stay. His muscles would quake from time to time as he tried to hold himself together. There was not a word for what he felt. It was nothing like the horror he remembers feeling when he found his home bloodied and abandoned and everything like the time in Budapest when a vibrant but deranged client tried to saw him in half with her butter knife.

But Lizzie…she would not move. She would not touch him or come to his aid. Nor, would she let him come to hers. The small box was a barrier, an awful, agonizing barrier.

"No." He didn't have an escape plan. Why would he? She wasn't _real_ after all. She was a dream. A fantastic dream. He knew he wasn't getting out of this one. He knew...he knew that he was slipping into a foggy stage of delirium. Knew that he was slowly bleeding his way into the cement at his back. Knew that breathing was becoming harder, that his vision wavered in and out and in and out.

His consciousness was much like the times he found himself floating out at sea. So many of his stories happened amid perilous surges of water. It's both poetic and cruel that life has led him, repeatedly, to one shore or another; life, death, the sordid land in between the two where he felt neither mortal nor eternal. Where every action had more than one cause and the ripples were too many to count. Those were the waves he lost himself to now as he watches her shift in the shadows and draw nearer.

He didn't want to look at her. Shame and defeat, guilt and agony, tore into him with each step she sent echoing between the walls. He had learned a long time ago to avoid that which seemed too devastating. So often had he reminded himself of how vulnerable he'd been that it became an obsessive need to prevent anything from breaching the interior he had built his vault around. They could make him bleed. Wrench his heart in half and beat it into the dust, but this thing he lived in...this scarred, burned, shot-up vessel was only another layer to the walls around his soul and mind.

The memory of Guantanamo, the first time he saw it, comes to mind; but it is the inverted and distended version. All that appeared salvageable, righteous, and true was locked away; left under the heavy security of the world's underbelly. _The Concierge of Crime_. What good did all those names do him now, what use was a mind full of the lives of everyone he's ever met, when the phantom of the last good thing in his life was stepping out of the shadows to stand before him?

His eyes hover near her boots, travel up to her calf, and notice the dust clinging to her pant leg where she'd been resting it against the floor. Funny, how his imagination added that minute detail. His eyes stutter over everything else and freeze on the stub that juts out a little from her elbow.

She stands so casually, as if she's ignorant to the fact that this is a scene to topple the strength he has left; half in the dark, half in the light. _You did this to her, Red._ The drip...drip...drip of blood smacking the ground near her feet is a special kind of torture that riddles his soul with a million unbearable wounds. No matter the bullet that struck him, the ribs that are broken, and the bruises he's suffered. He'd rather his lungs be on fire than see this. _You lose._ Those crimson beads flash against the cement and he does his best to avoid them like he avoids the voice in the shadows that surround her.

Reluctant to look at them, they're just faces he sees every now and then when sleep is more tiring than staying awake. But he doesn't want to add her to them yet. Greedy and possessive, his thoughts eat away at the light she'd bathed into his life; the promise and hope of the future she represented unwilling to die out completely. _I love how the light comes in through the-_

He blinks, wonders how long his eyes were closed, when next he opens them, she's crouched before him. Her eyes are dry and resolute, burning and searching for detail, nothing like the watery stare he expected. She does the most awful thing after that: she touches her fingers to the pulse under the raise of the scar she gave him and he holds his breath.

"It's weak, but it's there." She sounds muddled; her voice deeper, her scowl unfamiliar. Confusion and dizziness washes over him when he tries to get his eyes to focus on her own. "Reddington." Fingers bite into the wound in his chest and a sound claws its way out of his throat.

"_Lizzie_," a protest, a warning, an admonition grumbles out of him like a rock rolling down some mossy hill; soft and unstoppable.

"We have her, Dearie." Mr. Kaplan's voice reaches out to him and draws him back. The world gets a little louder, starts to move a little faster, and when he looks up, his longtime savior kneels before him. Business is the face she wears right now, and next to her is the grim face Ressler shows off these days. Less the Boy Scout and more the undercover agent he dealt with in Brussels.

"Not all of her." The two in front of him must share a look because his voice has wavered and cracked too much and the silence spans for too long afterward. There's more noise beyond them. _His team_. He knows their voices and their methods; the exhalation of silenced bullets and grounded noises of confirmations. He can practically feel their expertise permeate the area as though they were setting him in chains.

Chains to hold him down.

Chains to secure him.

Chains to help him sink into the abyss.

His awareness falters, but a hand on his catches him.

"Keep strong, Dear. We're not out of this yet." Kaplan's fingers seek his pulse again and Ressler is waving someone over. The fist he has around the tiny bracelet tightens. They make quick work of the IV. Someone keeps a steady pressure on the hole in his chest. He doesn't know who, he's closed his eyes again, retreating to that interior no one can touch, but he's fairly certain it's Ressler. Payment for past services rendered. He doubts he'll ever be repaid for killing Audrey's murderer, but they're making leaps and bounds if the agent is working with Kaplan. Maybe Berlin's head will be in a box by the end of the day.

"Targets secured. We gotta go." Red finds himself on his feet faster than he can breathe. The pain throughout his body catches up to him like dynamite set to level a building. His legs crumple underneath him, but there are hands to hold him up, and they're moving.

After an indeterminable amount of time, ambient light from a street lamp makes his eyes water, and then, there are strips of fluorescent bulbs above his head to wash out everything until it's pale and diluted. Spending hours in the din and gloom of the place they held him, Red feels like a blind man.

"Bullet went through. Looks like it clipped his collar bone. Maybe a rib. It's hard to say with the bruising and swelling." Cold air washes over him, wakes his mind a little more, and he wonders when they laid him down and how long ago. _Semantics,_ he craves them as he begins to discern the people talking. The front of his shirt is open; exposing much of the damage Berlin left in his wake and the ghosts of other painful endeavors. The smack of rubber gloves being adorned makes him flinch and the fuzzy figures around him seem to press in on all sides. An oxygen mask is placed over his face and obstructs the darker figure at his feet. _Dembe_. There's something crooked to the way the Sudanese man holds himself. The events of that morning come back to him and he wonders where his friend got caught in the ambush.

His eyes move from body to body; searching for one in particular. He is surrounded by eyes and voices and faceless people. Kaplan, he's sure that's her on the right, fiddles with his index finger. A moment or two later, the hollow, mechanical sound of his heartbeat reaches his ears. "Most of the damage seems to be concentrated on the right side. It appears they tried to clot the wound." The vehicle lurches and a hand grabs his ankle.

"You're sure you can fix all this?" There she is, the unfocused body near his head. Hair in a ponytail, a patch of white on her forehead. Dark clothing. Something holds her left arm aloft. He blinks a few times.

"I'm sure. We've done this before." A disapproving sound floats down to him and he thinks he disagrees with Lizzie's assessment of the information given to her. Kaplan and his team will offer him the unfettered security that the FBI can't. She's done this before. Dozens of times. Rescued him from the brink of death and flames and hell. He must be reacting. He must have moved or made a small noise. Or that shrill chirping he has for a heartbeat has caused some alarm, because she's there, leaning down over him and all he can do is breath in the proximity, relish the warmth he imagines he can feel, and marvel up at the sight of her.

"Hey," There's something else in the thumb he feels rubbing the top of his skull where she thinks no one can see, in the tears sitting in her eyes when her face comes into focus, in the tremble of her bottom lip. "It's going to be okay." By the look she gives him next, he knows that's not what she wanted to say. He knows her position beside him is still as uncertain as it has been from day one. That this, _this moment, right now,_ will forever change the way she looks at him.

He doesn't care. It's her voice…_her voice, so close and real_. It sends itself blissfully throughout his body; a warmth that reminds him of French wine settling in his belly, of the kiss of sunlight after a freezing night, the familiarity of the home he lost so long ago. But there's a stitch in it; unraveling the strength she's trying to show, and it worries its way into the muscles of his left arm. A reserve of energy saved for the action he must take.

When he draws it up toward her, the hand she was soothing him with takes his own. His thumb brushes the raised skin at the base of her palm, and he holds the bracelet between them. Through the mask on his face comes a relieved exhalation; all mercy and thanksgiving and grief.

It's there.

Her arm.

Her scar.

Her.

All of her.

_Whole_.

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**The other half of this will be up tomorrow ^^ enjoy for now!**


	2. Dust to Dust pt 2

**(For disclaimer, see chapter 1) Here's part II. I got tired of sitting on it, so you guys can have it ahead of schedule. I might just add to this randomly after I finish up whatever ideas are lingering with this Dust to Dust bit. Like, separate stories and whatnot when it comes to mind or when I need a muse-booster. **

**Thank you to everyone that favorited, followed, or reviewed and thanks to RedandLizzie for the tumblr shout-out. You are all so kind! Feel free to prompt something if there's a particular scene you want to read; either by pm or review. I should have the next chapter to Of Puppets and Puppeteers up soon! Fingers crossed. Anyway, enjoy! **

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_You've held your head up_

_You've fought the fight_

_You bear the scars_

_You've done your time_

_Listen to me _

_You've been lonely, too long_

"_Run."_

Dembe had said it low and rough in her ear the moment he'd pried her from one of the assailant's arms. She doesn't know how he did it. She doesn't know where he came from. But he seemed to appear, and then they were moving; two shadows bleeding and breathing hard.

Run.

Run away from home. Run to school. Run the obstacle course. Run to Sam. Run or the target will get away. Run or the bomb will detonate. Run or that little girl will die. Run to her husband. Run away from her husband. Run to the safest place she can think of.

Race to the man she needs and hates and _needs to hate._

Run away to save herself.

Run to live.

Run.

But Red didn't. He was taken. He was tortured. He disappeared. But not all trace had vanished. She'd never stared so intently at the pictures in the War Room as she did that day. She had discovered how all of the Blacklisters had been connected; heralding the oncoming storm that was Berlin. But there was more to it. There had to be. Cooper had told her that Red asked for favors after some of the more innocuous cases. Favors. Clues. Connections. Prizes.

The forty-eight hour mark was closing in on them.

Aram keeps watching her. Bounces ideas off of her.

The skeletal structures from The Alchemist's lab bother her.

The Stewmaker's cabin. The injections. Her screams.

Berlin's story. His daughter. Body parts.

_Just pieces to a much larger puzzle._

"Search Baltimore Missing Persons between the ages of twenty-four to thirty five going back two years."

"Okaaay, who are we looking for?"

"Me."

_Let me in the wall_

_You've built around_

_We can light a match_

_And burn it down_

_Let me hold your hand_

_And dance 'round and 'round the flames_

_In front of us_

_Dust to dust_

Mr. Kaplan doesn't tell her what to do.

Ressler doesn't tell her what to do.

Dembe doesn't tell her what to do.

Mostly, it's because the four of them have become permanent fixtures in the small bedroom Red occupies. So far he's awakened twice; brief moments of clarity that drifted into darkness. Supposedly, the first time was after a very small, very bald, very flustered doctor finished patching him up. He reminded Liz more of a mole rat in glasses, but they barely met because she and Ressler were escorted to the house's foyer while the man saved Red's life. The second time was while they were transporting him to a safer location; a mountain home somewhere in the reaches of New York.

The place almost reminded her of Kornish's cabin, but the front of the house had a wrap-around patio that overlooked a lake and the trees didn't suffocate the property like gravestones. Whoever the friends are that loaned them the place, she hopes they don't come back for a while. If she has to lie low, if she has to play the part she was falling into before four days ago…this place could let her do it in peace.

It could let _them_ do it in peace. For now, and for as long as it took Red to recover, they were safe. Kaplan assured her it wouldn't be long anyway, and she wonders, not for the first time, how resilient one man can actually be for no one to correct her. The team of soldiers Kaplan used during the Garrick incident came and went after securing their _employer_ and his _guest_. Berlin was being held, prepped and ready for Red to arrive. From some of the looks on their faces, Red was more important than whatever he was paying them.

The men and women she'd met since tracking Red down were unshakably loyal, and it frightened her. For all he was, for all he suffered, for all he made others suffer, Red had touched these peoples' lives profoundly, and she imagines that they have touched his. It was in watching their silent exchanges that she realized she had been collected into this group as well. The odd, fearful contemplation that sat deep inside her bones wasn't from the possibility of being surrounded by Red's enemies, but from the possibility of a world absent of the man who could protect her from them.

The ride from the place he was being held to that doctor's house was worse than finding Zamani in her home. That was the one incident she couldn't shake. She may hate Tom and everything he did and didn't do to her, but that fear she felt sitting in the doorway to their dining and living rooms would not go away no matter how much anger she poured into the memory. Losing Red, a second time, had panicked her in a way she couldn't explain. Giving him the same assurances she had given Tom when Zamani broke into her home was like a fatal blow to her heart.

_You care._ And not only did she care, but she cared _too much._ She'd let him breach a part of her she hadn't planned to open the door to, and she thinks that he might have been inside before she locked that piece of herself away; that maybe he'd been the architect all along. It's why she hasn't touched him since he held onto her in the ambulance. It's why she keeps her distance; why she wants to run away, but also never let him out of her sight.

Before her were miles of locked doors and he was the doorman. Supposedly, she had her own set of keys, but only for his doors. The entire situation was like some screwed up Japanese Puzzle Box. She hates it and she feels like if she loses him, she'll lose herself.

"How is your shoulder?" Kaplan's level and contrite stare pins her to her chair, and Liz's entire body tenses. It somehow seems sacrilegious to break the silence over her well-being. The question draws Ressler and Dembe out of their respective thoughts. With all eyes on her, she feels cornered.

Ricochet from the wall had embedded itself in her left shoulder as she came through the doorway when they were attacked. The wound itself hurts like a son-of-bitch, but she was getting used to it. That first day, she'd been mostly unconscious and she thinks Dembe had something to do with that. The second, Ressler couldn't keep her in the bed long after he told her that Red was still missing. She and Aram spent three hours sifting through profiles of young women until they got a lead. Lizzie got in touch with Mr. Kaplan and it wasn't long after that they'd found where Berlin had been holding him.

The finer details were a blur, but one thing was for certain: things moved faster when Red's people were involved. _We're going to make a great team._ She'd been side-lined for the extraction, but she wasn't an invalid and Kaplan wanted to keep her close this time around. Just in case. So she and Dembe, who was still sporting some grazes himself, manned the ambulance.

"It's fine." She doesn't sound very convincing when she shifts and her stitches pinch. There were only five of them. _Stop being a baby._ "Honest." That draws an imperceptible smile onto the older woman's face; the kind of skin-tight reaction that shows more in her eyes than on her lips. It's a face that reminds her so much of Sam that she can practically hear her father saying, _Like hell, Butterball._

"Have you cleaned it in the last fourteen hours?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

And just like that, the four of them settle back into the silence from before. Ressler's been oddly compliant since joining her on this rescue mission. And if she didn't know him better, she might have thought that Dembe was rubbing off on him. A lot had happened and a lot was left to be concluded. Despite their constant and reassuring presence, Liz wants them to go the hell away.

There was no reason for the four of them to be in here. It feels weird watching Red with everyone in the room; like this is a private moment and they're stealing it from her. She supposes they all have a right to the chairs they sit in; have a need and vested interest in the man that occupies the bed. But the idea of him waking up to them all picks at her almost as much as she's warmed by the idea that they've come together for this. _For him_.

Liz takes to fiddling with the bracelet Red pressed into her hand. One of the men holding her had ripped it off when Dembe rescued her. From the way Red was acting…they toyed with him. And that hand Ressler found…the thought of them using her to torment Red creates a lump in her throat. Over the last few weeks of tracking down Berlin and attempting to get the upper hand, Liz had tried not to empathize with the man behind Raymond Reddington.

She was still pissed at him for killing her father, but it was a muted feeling; all dull edges and hollowed wells. She had tried to reach for the anger she'd felt the day she found out, only to find her reserves missing. Anger was an easy emotion for her to feel. But it was no longer directed at Red.

What Berlin had done to Red, to her, to Dembe, to Meera, to Meera's family, to Cooper, and even to Tom, fueled the violent urges that spiraled through her. She wanted to cry, to yell, to throw something…but the room was too occupied, the man in the bed was too peaceful, and she didn't want the others to know she was breaking.

"I'm going to make some more coffee and check the perimeter." Dembe's quiet way seems louder and Liz watches Ressler rise from his chair as well,

"I'll go with you."

Kaplan makes no move to acknowledge the men as they leave, and it's only after Dembe has closed the door that she looks away from Red's direction and twitches a smile the way her aunt did when Sam got sick the first time. It's the kind of smile that touches on reassurance and falls into regret. It whispers _It's okay_ and echoes _…well it will be, eventually._ She hates this smile, but she returns it anyway; sure that it doesn't reach her eyes.

"I feel like I should be doing something." Liz endeavors to look somewhere meaningful as she says this: at Red, at his IV bags, or Kaplan's penetrating stare, but she just stares at her scar and remembers the way Red held onto her in the ambulance. The breath that fogged his oxygen mask, the way he closed his eyes, the sound he made.

He'd done that thing with his face she associates with honesty; where it appeared as if his entire world had been made right and was crumbling around him all at once. She didn't understand how a man could show so much with his eyes, how he could swallow so much emotion, how alive he was underneath all the death he carried around with him.

Out of the corner of her eye, Liz is aware of Kaplan crossing her legs and reclining into her chair, but she doesn't respond right away, and Liz wonders if even Mr. Kaplan doesn't know what to do with her.

"He came to me after he killed Garrick." Liz's stomach flips and she looks up to find the older woman watching Red. Two days after he had been taken, she got that call, and asked that question, and he disappeared for weeks before she saw him again. This is the story she had wanted him to tell her when he showed up at her place. The question had been there, the worry, the excitement…it was a surprised by joy moment and he had distracted her away from the inquiry.

"He was quiet while I cleaned him up, when I told him to lie down, when I asked him what he needed. He was just…quiet." Liz watches Kaplan take on a demeanor that is nearly identical to the way Red looks when he's telling stories, and she feels like she's looking at the wrong person. This story isn't specific, it's not detailed the way she wants it to be. _I'll never get the full version._

Liz's eyes travel over Red's prone figure. Except for the IV's, he was dressed like he was simply napping; vest undone, shoes on, cuffs rolled to his elbows…it reminds her of a long night that ended with her crying on the couch and drinking some horrible kind of moonshine. It reminds her of a comfortable silence, of sunlight breaking through the trees, of dust motes, and the smell of old manuscripts. It's the image of assurance and safety. But it's also a trick.

"He didn't want to be near you while he was cleaning house." Liz and Kaplan's eyes meet for a few seconds, and then the older woman shakes her head while something hard and thoughtful pulls at the corners of her mouth. "And he won't want you to do anything while he deals with Berlin, either."

"Too bad." The Berlin fiasco wasn't just about Red, anymore. Liz's entire life had been infiltrated and orchestrated from the moment she met Tom, and maybe even before that. This wasn't just Red's fight. "Berlin is about the both of us whether he likes it or not."

"And he's all too aware of that." She wishes that sentence accompanied some deep truth like: _why I'm so important to him, or what he needs me for, or why he insists on risking his life for me, and saving me, and all this crap._ Because then, she thinks she'd appreciate it more than she does. Liz has always had a hard time with altruism; questions it to make sure it is what it is. _That there's no catch._ She's more paranoid about it now. More paranoid about being used and ignoring the signs. Paranoid, because she doesn't want Red to wield her for some larger purpose, like she suspects he is. She wanted to be brought into the walls and the armor and the inner circle of the truth.

The smell of coffee floats in the air and rouses Kaplan from her seat with a sigh, "I'm going to leave you to stay with him. These joints aren't used to staying still for too long." There's some sort of anxiety that injects itself into Liz's system as she watches Mr. Kaplan head for the door. And she barely gets to protest before the older woman is gone. For the first time since everything happened, Liz is alone with Red and that _terrifies her._

What she was able to keep hidden around everyone else is slowly creeping up on her from the darker corners of her mind, and she wills herself to stay strong. This push and pull in their relationship had to stop. The further she pushed him away, the faster he seemed capable of pulling her back in. Elizabeth Scott was not fickle, and yet she repeatedly came back to him after walking away. _Why, though?_ Yes, there were answers she needed that she couldn't get without him, but maybe she could if she tried. So why bother with a man hell-bent on driving her nuts and almost getting her killed a handful of times?

While he said he had never lied to her, he wasn't always forthcoming. He'd gone off to deal with who he thought had been Berlin after she asked if he found him. He'd kept the circumstances of Sam's death a secret from her. He kept their connection a secret from her: the fire, her scar, her name…_my real name_. Her entire childhood was probably buzzing behind those unconscious eyes of his, and he wouldn't tell her. And his constant withholding of that vital information felt like some huge cover-up. _And cover-ups are lies._

Despite her misgivings, her body moves closer to him whether she wants it to or not, and with it comes her chair; dragged hastily to the left side of his bed so that she doesn't accidentally brush some wounded part of him. Her stitches pull a little but she steels herself and sits down. The closer she is, the more nervous she feels. But the closer she is, the more detailed his condition is as well, and that helps ground her; doubt hemorrhaging inside of her.

She stays because of this, _all of this._ She stays because of the way he looked at her after she took his hand in the ambulance. She stays because, even though she might be able to find out the answers to her past on her own, she wants _him_ to be the one to tell her everything.

This extraordinary, dangerous, funny, misleading, heroic criminal frustrated her in more ways than any language can express, but he's important to her. He's important like blood to a human body is important. She needs him if she's going to survive with her mind and heart and soul intact. _Because I need to come out on the other side of things._

"I don't know why I trust you," She whispers, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "But I do." She stays like that for a long time, and the others leave her alone. She can hear voices every now and then from beyond the door, but as far as she's concerned, no one else exists.

_You're like a mirror, reflecting me_

_Takes one to know one, so take it from me_

_You've been lonely_

_You've been lonely, too long_

_We've been lonely_

_We've been lonely, too long_

Around midnight, a sound reaches her through the nap she didn't mean to take, and she finds Red's unsteady gaze directed at the ceiling. Leaning over, her hand still gripping his, she tries to make him to look at her.

"Red?" A blink or two is all she gets in response, and then his eyes close. Sighing, she's almost about to get Mr. Kaplan, when his hand tightens around hers. She's not sure if he's awake or if it's some kind of involuntary movement, but her thumb brushes along the back of his hand, and she squeezes back, just in case.

"Lizzie," He swallows around her name, and his eyes open again. They look around the room slowly and waver in their search for her.

"Hey, Red." Liz doesn't make the same mistake she made in the ambulance. She caters to this experience in a way she didn't when Tom was in the hospital. _It's different._ Everything was different. His head falls to the left so he can see her better, and she leans forward again. His eyes seem distant and fogged with sensation, and when she can't think of anything else to say, she jostles their hands a little and asks, "Are you in pain?"

"Mmm…no…" Everything about him seems like he's wading through honey; all slow motions and delayed reactions. A thrill of fear plunges her heart into her stomach. _At least he's talking._ Tom had just blinked at her a few times before falling back asleep. "Dizzy." Liz glances up at the bags hanging above the bed, and chalks it up to the trauma his body has suffered and the meds that Mr. Kaplan has him on. _Still…_ She doesn't know much in the way of things medical.

"Do you want me to get Kaplan?" He shakes his head, winces, and the dithering silence swallows them. Liz watches him breathe and keeps brushing her thumb across the back of his hand. Just when she thinks his breathing has evened out again, he surprises her and draws in a deep, startled breath, and the noise that comes out of his mouth sounds a lot like her name mixed with Berlin's. "Easy, it's just us." He's panting, now, and she's sure she'd feel a startled heartbeat if she moved her forefinger to check his pulse.

"The Alchemist...Kornish." He says, finally, his eyes moving towards her again; holding her in a way that lay people behold something divine. There's no squirming away from this heavy look, and after a moment she nods just so he'll look away. He doesn't.

She thinks, watching him stare at her, watching him catalog the scratches on her forehead, the sling her arm is in, and the bags she knows are under her eyes, that he would like nothing more than to address them and make them better. But with the lethargy plaguing him, she knows he isn't capable just yet.

"Aram and I figured it out." He makes a little sound in the back of his throat; dry and weak. She thinks there should be some water on the table next to his bed, but there isn't, and looking away seems to have made talking impossible. What she planned to say is lodged in her throat as she glimpses the bruises peeking out from under his collar.

He's still staring at her, and it takes his small frown for her to realize that there are tears burning her eyes. "I don't know what to say." She wants to apologize. She wants to tell him how happy she is that he's finally awake. She wants to tell him that he isn't allowed to die or get hurt or taken or tortured ever again. She wants to demand promises that he probably won't be able to keep. She wants him to talk and laugh off her concern and smile and say something ridiculous or infuriating.

But all he does is pick up their hands and press her knuckles to his mouth. It's not a kiss, exactly, but there is a moment where they linger at his lips, and then he's drawing in a breath and she thinks he's died because he holds it, and then there's pain riddled in ever line on his face. He may not look at her just then, and he may not say anything, but it's too agonizing and too obvious to ignore: that they're both the most important person in each other's lives. Anything she might have wanted to say, anything she might have wanted to tell him, he didn't need to hear any of it. He didn't need to be coddled or reassured.

_This right here_, it was all the confirmation he needed.

He had her.

She had him.

When he exhales and lets their hands rest low on his chest…_that's_ when she bursts into tears.

* * *

**Wooh! I have a few more ideas for this. I can't guarantee that they will be along the same story-line, but we'll see. I think this is just gonna be the place where I dump all my thoughts about how and who they all are. Probably just character studies. Hope you liked it! (Again, the song reference is from The Civil Wars "Dust to Dust". Great song. Great Album. Great band. Check 'em out!) Also, everything I write is unbeta-ed so...if there are mistakes, please point them out. I'm sorta ocd about them and I can only re-read something so many times before my eyes just...don't see the mistakes haha. **


	3. Odd Man Out

**(For disclaimer, see chapter 1) Part III! Your responses to the former chapters blew me away. I can't possibly tell you how touched I am. Thank you guys so much. This chapter is a liiiittle shorter than the first chapter, but I really enjoy the idea of Ressler going Bourne or something, and totally getting dragged along the Red and Lizzie Express, so here ya'll go.**

* * *

Keen and Reddington fell into their own routines.

Dembe into his.

Kaplan…who knew what the hell she did besides appear.

Ressler was fairly certain she didn't sleep on the premises. Or there was some sort of bunker he didn't know about, which was impossible because he and Dembe had secured the area three times before either of them were able to think about sitting in a chair long enough to take the ache out of their bones.

Cooper was probably pacing somewhere. Pissed. Frustrated.

Aram was definitely sitting nervous and worried. He could almost picture that one.

Berlin was secure.

He was alive.

And he was waiting.

Waiting to be questioned.

Waiting to tell his tale.

Waiting to die.

* * *

Ressler thinks he and Liz could tell Red the story Berlin told them in the hospital. He thinks he could simplify the outcome. But honestly, he wants to be there for the interrogation. He wants an answer for Meera's death. He wants to know why her kids are without a mother. Why Cooper had scars no one usually lived long enough to talk about.

So he tells himself that's why he's been behaving. He tells himself that's why he helped and that it's why he's stayed. It's not because Liz was hurt. It's not because he feels responsible for her. It's not because of Audrey. It's not because he feels like he owes Reddington anything. _I'm curious_. And he knows he can play ball long enough to get the answers he thinks he wants.

What he didn't expect were the domestic glimpses he got every time he walked into a God-damn room.

Dembe reclined on a sofa, watching TV. Dembe smiling. Having conversations about jobs they've done in the past: most of Dembe's were obviously illegal. Kaplan, enough said. Period. He's pretty sure she could disarm him with her eyes. Liz reading or laughing or on the verge of tears. Liz after a shower. Liz taking naps. Brushing her teeth. Liz in pajamas. Liz pacing around Reddington. Reddington reading at the kitchen table. _With glasses_. Reddington asleep. Reddington sleep_less_. Reddington with stubble. Red in jeans. That one was the weirdest. Reddington in T-shirts. That one was weird too. He'd seen Red in all sorts of attire during those five years the man spent evading him, but this was different. No one was watching, or being chased or assassinated or tricked and he found that Red was actually kind of normal in this setting.

It's the state Don finds him in as he comes up the porch steps from his patrol that troubles him. Dressed to the nine's, Red sits in one of the two rocking chairs on the patio outside the front door. Dawn is slowly creeping its way into the sky, and fog clings to the edges of the lake like some ghoulish border; a hazy and ill-functioning wall between beautiful and eerie. He slows, both audibly and physically, and he stops just before the top step.

It appears as though Red hasn't even noticed him. Something devastating and irrepressible hovers in the criminal's eyes before he blinks whatever nightmare he was living away. And then that meticulous stare is pinned to him.

"Donald." The usual, derogatory smile isn't as focused and this is another thing Don is uncomfortable with. The more he watches Reddington recover, the more he sees of the man underneath all the bravado. And the more he recognizes the facets of himself reflected back to him.

"Red." He starts for the door after a moment, knows he should wake Dembe, or put coffee on because Liz will be up soon. But, just as his hand curls around the doorknob, he's stopped by Reddington's hushed voice.

"Do you remember what I told you when we were stuck in the box during Anslo's visit?" _I wouldn't really call that a visit but,_

"Yeah, most of it." Not everything. He didn't remember Luli dying. He didn't remember Red praying with Dembe. He didn't see the look on Red's face when Anslo first brought Liz into the room. He remembers tears in his eyes when he thought he was going to die. He remembers Red's reasons for living. He remembers using Audrey as a reason all on his own. He remembers feeling astounded by gratitude. Awed by his greatest enemy. He remembers the gun against his temple. He remembers telling them the code and Red slipping the weapon into his hand and shooting the gunman.

And pain. He remembers pain. "Why?"

Red draws in a quiet breath and Don watches the corners of his mouth twitch upward before his face settles into something less reflective and more resolute. His demeanor shifts and his spine holds him a little more erect. Reddington is who he appeared to be that first day: cocky, conceited, untouchable.

"Isn't this view spectacular?" The question draws Ressler's attention away from the tick in the side of the man's cheek and towards the haunting view. The sun still hasn't risen fully and the sky reminds him of this baby blanket he saw at Walmart a week after Audrey died. It had stars on it. They were supposed to glow in the dark. _Peri-twinkle._ What a silly color name for a gut-wrenching moment. "Reminds me of a lake I almost drowned in as a boy." Just like his time in the box, Don can feel himself being pulled in. These stories, this cadence Reddington adopts when he tells them…it's feels like being inebriated and it feels like sinking.

"Despite my father's warnings, I waded out into the middle. _Always_ curious to see how deep things really were. Hands on, that kind of thing. I was so _fearless_…" As he speaks, Ressler watches the water, imagines a young boy swimming out into the middle, of a father's stern voice echoing through the fog, maybe a mother somewhere along the water's edge. But the lake Red was talking about was not this lake. "My foot snagged on a rusty coil of barbed wire. And I thought-I remember _pretending_ to be fine, that I was just treading water and that if I could get out of it my father wouldn't have to know. I ducked under to try and free myself, and when I failed, when I knew I had to admit defeat, I started to resurface, and couldn't." Screw the lake beyond the porch. It was Reddington's face Don watched now; his heart knocking against his ribs. He's lost sight of the monster and the man appears; worn, guilty, and mournful. There's this complete and total longing in Red's voice that draws on a similar hunger in the younger man.

The younger man that isn't an FBI Agent.

Or a bachelor.

Or a…_I can't even call myself a widower. _

_Can't call myself a father._

Was there a word for something that would have been?

Dreams.

Nightmares.

_The first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning._

"All my jostling and tugging had pulled me deeper. I remember reaching for the surface, just beyond my fingertips. The _terror_ I felt when my lungs began to strain, the panic…but I could see the sunlight through the murkiness and it gave me hope even though I knew I was running out of air." Ressler's body jerks when Red's eyes meet his. This careful, intense study of the older man's face was not something he had planned to be caught in the middle of. In Red's eyes he sees a decision trying to make itself. In them he glimpses a trench of questions and answers too far down in the dark to read or hear or see. In them he watches trepidation weave itself into the man's confidence like weeds to gardens. When he can't take the staring anymore, when he can't take the unspoken conversation Red is trying to convey, he clears his throat and crosses his arms.

"Ah-so is uhm-is that what you're doing now?" Did Don plan on being this perceptive this morning? Did he plan on the riddles and the stories that conveyed certain feelings of a certain, arrogant criminal mastermind? No. But he likes that he's gotten Red's attention. He likes that he's caught him off guard.

"Doing what?" Ressler is pretty sure he could ask just about anything right now and he might get something nearer to the cards that Red plays so close to the chest. He might never get another opportunity for this man to be this vulnerable.

"Running out of air." He watches Reddington sag into the rocking chair; his thumbs tapping the insides of the armrests. It's when Red looks away that Donald sees the exhausted pull in the man's demeanor; the weight he's lost, the tension in his shoulders, the past he can't seem to dust off of his lapels. Since they extracted him and Berlin from that warehouse, Ressler hadn't touched a phone, hadn't used his badge, hadn't kept up the FBI's Poster Child appearance…he'd followed Liz's lead, bit his tongue, did a few good things, helped carry Reddington out of a cell and into two houses, killed people, had kept watch…_I've traded one job for the other._

"Yes." Red's curt finality throttles his nervous system. He thinks back to the first day: Red secured inside the Post Office, inside an impenetrable box, strapped to a chair, tagged like some dog prone to neighborhood excursions. He thinks of Cooper, of Berlin, of Anslo, of Meera and Tom and Audrey and the world that is flooding the one he knew.

Nothing about this was like Brussels.

It wasn't black and white.

The lines had blown away.

Everything was grey.

_Like bodies in a morgue._

"And this-all of this-the Blacklist, the risks…it's saving you? Giving you air, or whatever?" He knows that all of this poetic nonsense will go away until Red needs to convey something emotional again. He knows that he won't get another moment like this for a while. That Red will piss him off in the next day or so. That they'll eventually be done with the Berlin chapter and begin hunting the other people on Reddington's list. But for now…this microcosm of being sustained the mysteries and yielded the slow answers to them.

Before Red can answer, the door swings in and out comes Liz. Don lurches back and out of the way, recognizing the mixture of worry and suspicion on her face, and Red looks up with a smile.

"Good _morning_, Lizzie." Don watches Liz stamp down a smile of her own when she sees what Red is wearing. He thinks the porch might have gotten a little colder. It was the first thing Ressler had noticed, and it sure as hell was the first thing Liz noticed. "Donald and I were just talking about-"

"Red, why are you dressed like you're going somewhere?" _And that's my queque._ A hands-on-the-hips Liz was not one he wanted to deal with this early…_or late,_ considering he didn't really sleep before Dembe 'woke him up' for his shift. Just as he turns to head inside, mind jumbled with Red's story and pseudo-confession, he's stopped, once more, by his name.

"Donald, to answer your question," He turns over his shoulder, sees Liz's attention shift to him out of the corner of his eye. "_Hopefully._" It's enough. For now.

As he heads back into the house, he wonders if these were the kinds of conversations Reddington had with Cooper. He wonders what sort of information was passed along. He wonders if his superiors knew the full extent of Red's motives, if there were people out there that were watching them while they watched Red. _Of course there are._ And what was holding Red just under the surface? What was pulling him down? _Karma. Life._ And as he gets to the kitchen, the tail end of Liz's ranting catches him like a fist to his sternum.

He'd left the door cracked.

She asks, brazenly, what he and Red were talking about.

The muffled, rumbling response is indiscernible; echoes a seemingly endless patience reserved just for her.

And Ressler pauses to inhale the smell of the house around him; the stale remnants of coffee, of the Italian food they had for dinner, of shampoo from the shower he hears running.

Lets it consume him as he mulls over the story of Red drowning as a boy, of sunlight in the murkiness and something just out of reach, and he thinks,

_We were talking about you._

Though he isn't sure what parts she played in that story.

Maybe all of them.

He wouldn't know.

* * *

**It didn't turn out the way I had originally thought. woops. Let me know what you think. And if you'd like to read something let me know that as well. Otherwise, I'll just be adding to this as I think of things. Enjoy! And thanks for reading!**


	4. Again and Again

**(For disclaimer, see chapter 1) Thank you to everyone who reviewed and favorite and followed. You guys are so awesome. Seriously. I love getting feedback. This one is set the night after Liz and Red talk on the porch in the last chapter. The thing about these characters is that there's not a helluva lot to go off of in terms of what's driving them or where their ends are going to be (except for maybe Liz) and I'm so excited for season two because I think a lot more of the mechanics of these characters will come out. And I've been thinking about how huge the show's plot must be and how deep the mythology must go and I'm just so freakin ecstatic for this story to unfold. It's only been…what? Two weeks since it ended? This is gonna be a loooooong summer, guys.**

* * *

Things never happen the same way, and she should have known that.

There's blood everywhere.

Between her fingers.

Under her nails.

On the floor.

The walls.

The carpet.

_Everywhere_.

* * *

Questions and helplessness were all Elizabeth knew. The hard floor had long since been forgotten. The ache in her knees and her back..._gone_. She was numb except for all the hurt that is distress and rage inside of her. But it's the sound of expensive shoes that drives her nerves through the roof.

Back and forth and back and forth.

A constant grind.

They killed them. She couldn't stop it. And they were going to kill _her._

He paces before her, clasping and unclasping the hand he's placed behind his back. A real soldier, this one. The stub is all tidy and wrapped where he cut his hand off. But this man...he is a lion walking before lambs.

Three down.

Two to go.

Ressler was hit first, this time. They dragged him in from patrol after they secured the house. Bullet to the heart. Dead before he hit the ground. Dembe took two in the chest before he went down in the corner of the kitchen. His foot is still peaking around counter through the doorway.

It was a blitz after those initial shots. Everyone hit the floor. Crawled. Tried to get to their weapons as quickly as possible, but couldn't manage to fight them off. Kaplan must have died in a room Liz couldn't see. Or they were torturing her. Either way, there was no sign of the older woman, and her expertise was desperately needed right now.

A knife was sticking out of Red's abdomen.

Right where Tom left it before he retreated to the corner of the room; concealed in the shadows as opposed to the plain sight where he'd done his job.

Dated her.

Married her.

Had sex with her.

Dreamed of their future with her.

Painted the baby's room.

Yelled. Laughed. _Pretended_.

"If you help me save him, you can get your answers," she was holding Red the way a mother holds a sick child: all arms and a soothing cacophony of hush. If she pulled the knife out, she wouldn't be able to staunch the blood flow and kill Berlin. _It's one or the other._ If she didn't, every tiny breath Red took put him in danger of nicking an organ or an artery. She wasn't sure how they would make it out of this. And the indecision left her feeling bereft; shoreless in an ocean of dread.

"I have my answers, Agent. Why do you think I know who is responsible?" And just like that the man they call Berlin crouches in front of them. On reflex, Liz tightens her hold on the man bleeding to death in her arms. "I just want him to suffer." She feels like an ant under a magnifying glass, and the holder is determining whether or not she'll hold still long enough so he can torch her under the sun. "But it seems our mutual friend has decided to pass out." Berlin rises with a thoughtful sound and beckons to the shadows. "We'll have to fix that."

Tom emerges with something that resembles a cattle prod and two arms snake their way under her own and around her middle. She's yelling and squirming but like boas, the arms constrict, and she can't get free. She finds herself on a chair faster than she thought possible; tied down, too secure and immobile. Tom touches that thing to her sternum with a look of total grief and adoration. _I'm so sorry_ and _I love you_ haunting the lines on his face and settling into his eyes.

That's when the world falls silent and her body is overcome with sensation; bugs crawling under skin with fire and rigor. Nothing in the world rivals the taxation of electrocution. It burns and pulses and knocks into you like a bull; dropping you in a heap of bones and stones for muscles.

Air doesn't exist. She is useless and used at the same time. Screaming without relief or reprieve. Until finally...it stops and she's left gulping oxygen; a fish out of water. Her agony and the movement have jarred Red into the waking world by the time it's finished. Liz is left spitting threats and pleas and warnings to Berlin as he stands over Red and bends down.

Terror has never felt so heavy. Sorrow never so determined. When their enemy's hand grips the handle of the knife and twists, the sound that comes out of Red's mouth scrapes its way into her ears and claws at her brain.

She was wrong about electrocution being the worst thing.

"Please don't." Bargaining. She was the FBI. At least part of her was. She had things she could offer. Lies she could tell now that could be made true later if it saved enough of the right lives. "If you stop this," Her eyes dance between Berlin and Tom and then they settle on Red. "I can-I can get you a deal. Anything you want. A way out of this mess." Berlin looks away from Red's scrunched up face and towards her before he laughs.

This isn't what she expected at all but it means the worst is coming. People who want out don't laugh at the offer of it. People who want to live beyond their deeds don't-

"Tell me Agent _Keen_, what do you think comes after for a person who has lived for the sweet nectar of revenge?" She doesn't want to answer. She doesn't want him to tell her. She knows. "Oblivion." He steps away from Red, leaving the knife there, and gives her this look of calculated longing. "At first, I thought you were just a minion, a pawn," Berlin has a habit of drawing his words out; lets the vowel sound draw and draw along his vocal chords. "But, it seems you were far more important. My man was right in not killing you before." The most imperceptible glance is afforded to Tom, then. It was small and insignificant but it echoed into her soul the way she thought his vows had.

The next few moments are never clear. They never stick. It's just Red's voice and Tom's apology. Sometimes it's Sam, other times it's a face she can't discern or it's Berlin. And then there's a gun she never hears going off and-

Reality slams into her lungs. The air is more concrete. The feeling of the couch against her side is stuffy and uncomfortable, but the room is clean and smells of cedar and life. It's not covered in blood. Her hands are clean. Her arms hold nothing but the space between them and her body.

"Nightmare." Red's voice filters in through the sound of her heartbeat and the thundering of her nerves; smooth and tapered in knowing. "But you came out of it." He says this like he knew she would, as though overcoming a great hurdle. There's pride and congratulations and a strange mixture of regret, but it makes her feel rooted in the moment. Heaving herself into a sitting position, she shivers. Nights in this lake house have been the opposite of the muggy afternoons. She thinks she might be able to see her breath.

"Why are you up?" Even though she doesn't know what time it is herself, the view of Red sitting on the opposite chase lounge was disconcerting. He looked unkempt. Sweaty. Haggard. His shirt was wrinkled. Vest undone. His fists were clenched at his sides. "And still dressed." She'd seen him in casual clothes, but not pajamas. Not even sweats or something more comfortable than all the clothes he thinks he can wear to escape in. This earns her a small chuckle but the slight wince on his face clues her in.

_He's in pain._

Physical.

Emotional.

But it's still pain.

"Tell me about your dream, Lizzie." She isn't sure she wants to. In fact, a part of her wants to give his dodgy way of conversing right back to him. _Tell me about yours._ But that sounds too much like an elementary school tactic. _I'll show you mine if you show me yours._ A childish joke and an inappropriate innuendo for the moment. Liz runs a hand over her face as if she might be able to shed the remnants of the dream that stick to her like cobwebs in the corners of an attic.

"It's about you-us. _All of us._" Her heartbeat jumps a little as she thinks about all the ways she's seen them die since they've gotten here, and she suppresses the urge to run away. She hadn't meant to fall asleep on the couch, and she thinks that if she were to excuse herself, he wouldn't stop her. The middle of the night was a private endeavor for those troubled by sleeplessness. Usually, she would wander or pace along the porch, but it's different when there are eyes to watch her every move. And the fact that they're Red's eyes doesn't seem to make a difference. She doesn't want him to see the panic she feels lingering in the tips of her fingers and around her lungs. "Everyone dies differently every time, but you do die, well not you, but you _are_ hurt, and they shoot me to make you suffer and that's when I wake up."

She looks to find Red's eyes studying her in the level way they do when she's upset; a common function for her in the evenings. Nighttime was when the past decided to speak a million different avenues into her brain; spewing this and that and the inverses of each.

"And this time?" He asks as if it doesn't bother her, as if he actually wants to know the way he almost, _nearly¸_ dies. Maybe he _does_ want to know. Maybe he wants to entertain the death. The notion that he's thought of how he is going to die, of how he will eventually meet his end, frightens her with all the possessive qualities she is capable of having.

_Death cannot have him._ It was a point she had made this morning on the porch after he refused to tell her about what he and Ressler had been talking about. All that nonsense of going to question Berlin after only a week and a half of recovery had sent her into a fit. After pointing out a few prominent issues with this plan, she forbade him to leave; which actually turned out to be a thing he allowed her to do. He had seemed almost amused at the prospect before his eyes watered into the coloration of awe.

He did that a lot lately. In the park when she tried to get him to go with her before Agent Gary-Martin could get him. _What are they going to do? Kill me?_ When he told that story about nearly dying. _Nothing is worse than losing you._ When she showed up in that taxi and chose to stay with him. It's the look of confusion and gratefulness and the sudden shock of worry.

"Tom stabbed you like Zamani stabbed him." She wonders if she should bring up the electric shock and the sound of his pain that seems to haunt the corners of the room; the ambient noises scattering her courage like water to an oil fire.

"Scars to match." He's thoughtful as he looks off towards the door. She supposes that it is his fault Zamani came into her home and terrorized her and her husband. _Fake husband._

But really, Red isn't thinking of that, and if she knew, she may never speak to him again. Another dismissal. Another goodbye. The final straw. The reason why Kaplan barred her from any room where his bandages were being changed or he was getting dressed or examined or patched up. They had all been very discreet. _Scars to match._ If all there was between the day he showed up and the day she became an orphan was a scar to match Tom's, maybe he wouldn't feel so condemned. But there was more. Far more. And he wasn't ready to burn a second time. Not yet. No, the agony and the defeat and the loss would come along as surely as his enemies would.

"Yeah," Liz's thoughts drag her into the pieces of yesterday when she was sitting in the kitchen while Mr. Kaplan helped Red stretch his shoulder a little. When they emerged, he had sagged into the chair beside her own and downed a muscle relaxant he'd been given. After he regained his limited mobility, Mr. Kaplan resorted to cheeky with a dash of stern in order to keep him compliant enough to take his meds. This different atmosphere of life had glued her compassion to someone she should still want to hate or punch or hurt, but the idea of doing anything to cause him more pain made her feel like the victim of a voodoo doll; the pin having been driven straight into her heart. "Red, about earlier, I just want you to be safe. I _need you_ to be safe."

She stares long into the hard wood floor at her feet after she says this; quiet and nothing as eloquent as the way he portrays how he feels. She can tell her fair share of stories, but he lives for them. After the silence yawns wider and wider, Liz looks up and finds him peaceful; his eyes closed, his breathing even, with his hands slack. She watches him for a moment, an odd stirring of need pumping itself into her heart. The need to hold some part of him. The need to freeze time. The need keep him, right there, forever.

After a heartbeat more, she crosses to him and the sound of her moving off the couch wakes him. He glances up at her; eyes drooping, his smile a little embarrassed.

"You're the one that needs to be safe, Lizzie." It's all garbled and sleepy, but he picks up the conversation where he had dozed. She doesn't care. They're done talking tonight. He lets her move him so that he's lying down. Lets her prop his right side against the back of the sofa. Lets her bend one of his knees for further support. She asks if he needs a blanket. He declines. And Liz, after a moment of kneeling next to him, of studying him the only way she feels deprived of on a regular basis, close and uncensored, she retreats to her couch again.

It takes him a little while to fall back asleep, but not as long as she would have thought. Maybe he'd taken something for the pain or what ever drove him from his bed tonight, but she watches him fight it until all that exists is the steady rise and fall of his chest in the dark. It's a scene she could watch until the day she dies, his breathing and wellness and life.

It's what she watches all night.

The tiny movements in his face.

The twitch of a finger.

How much more she sees when the sun starts to creep into the sky.

And then it will end.

He'll wake up and watch her.

She'll pretend to be asleep.

Both willing the safety of the other.

* * *

**Not my best. The ending really evaded me on this one. ^^ Hope you enjoyed it, anyway. I also haven't edited this one, yet. So any mistakes will probably be fixed when I have time to read over it more carefully. Thanks for reading!**


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